To the editor:
For fifteen years, Hopewell Township’s government has approached affordable housing politically, not scientifically.
The scientific approach? Follow the Master Plan, which stated that the areas in the north and center, whose sensitive soils were never sewered, should not be paved in order to preserve the aquifer recharge that serves more than 1.5 million well water users. Hopewell Township’s sewer service area is in its southern tier, and sewers are needed to accommodate denser affordable housing.
The science should reign, but recent township governments have pandered to residents of the southern tier. The familiar, political refrain: “Let’s distribute affordable housing throughout the town.” Let’s win votes by promising less burden upon residents of the southern tier.
One committee sought to place affordable units in barns. They achieved no such units. But they got votes.
A much more expensive effort, Pennytown, sought to place units on environmentally sensitive lands. That failed effort cost $7.8 million dollars before science intruded. We were saved by brave officials, notably Harvey Lester, who stopped this environmental boondoggle. Our affordable housing fund today sits near empty. The township wants to sell the land for redevelopment, but the current market is unlikely to recover those costs. The current administration reminds us that they did not vote for Pennytown, but they appointed its main advocate to the planning board.
The township pandered by purchasing for open space the land behind ShopRite, only to exchange it for use to build 78 affordable housing units, 300 market-rate homes, and a community center.
The latest pandering: Let’s place some affordable housing units at BMS. The committee publicly acknowledged that development there is 99 percent unlikely to occur. If it does not, 30 additional affordable units will be moved, by signed agreement, into the area behind ShopRite, along with another four market-rate homes for every additional affordable unit.
That new, costly “plan” gives the township administration yet a new political opportunity to say that they tried to lessen the impact on the southern tier.
In other words, many recent members of the township committee are still willing to squander township resources in order to win votes.
Deputy Mayor Blake is the latest. She prides herself in saying that the township has tried to lessen the development pressure upon her neighborhood. But that’s politics, not science.
She tells us also that the township investigated every possible alternative, but their process remains steeped in secrecy. What alternatives did they consider? What investigations did they conduct? Did they examine each alternative’s long-term impact on township budgets? If that was their scientific method, it’s hard to believe that they would have signed with developers to build 2,881 market-rates units and permitted 100,000 square feet of new commercial development.
I hope that voters will stop rewarding such pandering and poor process. We need to return to open township government, like when the new Master Plan was passed, when science reigned. Politics and pandering have cost us much and left us with a horrific plan.
Cheryl Edwards
Hopewell Township
